


Shotgun and a Telecaster

by PatInTheHat



Category: Prestuplenie i nakazanie | Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Genre: F/F, Im beyond giving a fuck anymore, M/M, My Magnum Opus
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-11-30
Packaged: 2018-04-23 04:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4863518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PatInTheHat/pseuds/PatInTheHat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Nobody's going to read this lol) If you have an above-average love for classic lit and an unbridled enthusiasm for college AUs, this is the fic for you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It was dark out when Razumikhin arrived at his dorm, but all the lights inside remained on. His roommate Raskolnikov was asleep, sprawled awkwardly across the arm of the couch with a book grasped limply in his hand. He was wearing his grungy college sweatshirt, the one he refused to replace even though it was worn out and stained with ink at the cuffs. Razumikhin gently took the book from Rodya's fingers and smiled. He knew that had Rodya been awake, he would have pulled back his hand and refused any help, and stubbornly insisted on doing everything himself. But his long-running sleep deprivation had evidently caught up with him, so Razumikhin pulled his roommate onto the couch and draped a blanket over him. Razumikhin paused then, and looked at Rodya's face, which was unusually peaceful with sleep. He could almost hear Rodya's teasing voice in his head, "Staring at people while they sleep, Raz? Don't be a creep." He noted fondly that Rodya's hair was a mess, dark waves tousled about and and strewn across the couch pillow beneath his head. The corner of his mouth twitched, in response to his dream, perhaps, and Razumikhin suddenly wanted more than anything to kiss him there, and on his forehead, and where his collarbones protruded just slightly more than was healthy, and desperately, desperately he wanted to kiss his chapped, bitten lips. But the sudden wave of intense longing was gone as soon as it had struck, and Razumikhin turned to leave. 

"Raz?" Rodya sat up blearily.

"Go back to sleep," said Razumikhin, gently pushing his friend back down. His chest suddenly ached, deep in the center where he knew that for all the spells of want and affection that strayed just too far from platonic, he could not do anything Rodya did not want. He would not take that risk of doing anything to upset his friend, to go too far or to ruin their friendship. He packed away his thoughts and squashed them away into a corner of his mind. He left the room, clicking off the light as he went, and did not look back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The whole plot of this chapter is a total trope for any and all R/R fanworks, but that's a grand total of maybe four fanfics so here we go. Into the trash bin.

Rodya was hot. But concerningly so, and not in the usual way that made Dmitri question his sexuality.

He'd stumbled home from class stifling deep, ugly coughs, his eyes glazed and his cheeks flushed. 

"You're sick," Razumikhin had said.

Rodya had muttered, "No m'not" and waved his friend away with a limp hand before slumping heavily onto the couch. 

Dmitri had then placed a hand on Rodya's head, despite his weak protests, and had thus come to his conclusion.

Rodya was hot. 

He was trying to disguise his fever, trying to hold a conversation in the hopes that Razumikhin would be convinced that he was "perfectly fine" and "not even really sick." His words, though, streamed out in feverish loops and were punctuated by wheezing coughs. Dmitri ignored him, grabbed a dusty bottle of cough medicine from a shelf and pressed it into Raskolnikov's hands.

"What the fuck is this," said Raskolnikov, staring dazedly at the bottle in his hands.

"Cough medicine," Razumikhin replied, "It's old and I don't really know the dosages, but it's better than nothing."

"But m'not sick," repeated Rodya as he collapsed backwards onto the couch. "Okay maybe a little bit but I don't need any fucking... Cough medicine... Bullshit." He broke off. "My head hurts."

"Would you please just drink the goddamn medicine" And he did so, glaring at Dmitri the entire time.

\---

Dmitri came back later, a glass of water in hand. Rodya blinked at him, and while he didn't seem quite so feverish his eyes were still unfocused. 

"How're you doing, man?" 

"You're so nice to me," said Rodya. Dmitri was momentarily thrown by the non sequitur, but before he could respond, Rodya continued.

"Like, I'm such a piece of shit but you're nice to me and you gave me that cough stuff and" He stopped his rambling for a second. He muttered something else, something Dmitri couldn't hear, before hauling himself to his feet.

"Hey, maybe you shouldn't-" He didn't finish his sentence, because Rodya was leaning clumsily across the back of the couch and kissing him with feverish lips. It was an awkward position with his legs pressed into the couch and the glass of water on the verge of spilling and Rodya's aim slightly off, at the corner of his mouth, but he didn't care. Rodya's hands, as dry and fever-warm as his mouth, were braced around his neck.

Rodya pulled away. He stared for a second. 

"I... Shouldn't have done that." It was a statement, but one that was clearly intended to be a question.

"No! No. You're fine," Dmitri replied, trying to figure out what to say. Rodya lay back down, and Dmitri, for lack of a better course of action, put the glass on the floor and left.

\---

Raskolnikov woke up with a pounding headache, a bitter taste in his mouth, and a vague feeling that he'd fucked up. The previous day was a foggy blur, though he vaguely recalled Raz making him drink some cough syrup shit. 

Raz coughed awkwardly when he saw Rodya, saying "So, about... Um."

Rodya stared at him uncomprehendingly.

"You... You remember, right?" Raz wouldn't meet his eyes and Rodya wished for the life of him that he could remember what, exactly, he'd fucked up so badly as to dampen Raz's frightening ability to talk endlessly in the early hours of the morning. Slowly, he shook his head.

"Oh. It's nothing, then." Raz looked relieved, but his shoulders were slumped and his voice held a note of defeat. Rodya turned his attention to the coffee maker and resolved to figure out what he'd done this time.


	3. Chapter 3

Rodya had a multitude of words in his head and a mess of scribbles on the page in front of him but none of them had anything to do with the class he was in. His fever was considerably better, but his thoughts were far from coherent. He was rifling through his memories of the past 36 hours, streams of thought running through his head, doodles sketched aimlessly in his notebook. The issue was that while he had fragmented memories of his sick day, he had no idea which had actually happened and which were creations of his fevered mind.

He remembered something involving a hockey player and a box of hamsters; that, he concluded, was definitely a fever dream. He remembered the cough medicine he'd downed; that had definitely happened. But he also remembered wandering around the kitchen, fumbling with the washing machine only to realize that it was empty, rolling off of the couch in his sleep, and, impossibly, kissing his roommate. They all seemed to float between the too-absurd-to-have-been-true and the definitely-plausible. He couldn't for the life of him sort them into either group.

He was especially concerned about his memories, false or otherwise, of kissing Razumikhin. Why hadn't he written it off as absurd right away? Why was he still hesitating to sort it in with the other fever dreams? If it had actually happened, then he'd clearly reaffirmed himself as a royal screw-up. And if it hadn't, his brain had still concocted the situation itself. What would that mean? 

Rodya didn't think about people that way. There was the occasional fleeting crush, the "damn you're gorgeous but no romo," the platonic crush he'd mistaken as romantic, but never a true sustained interest. It just didn't happen. He'd reconciled himself with he fact that he was, for the most part, uninterested in relationships, and he was quite frankly offended that his brain had made some stupid decision to confuse him yet again. 

But Raz... He hadn't thought about Raz that way at first, but as their friendship grew closer there was something off about it. Rodya couldn't put his finger on it, but their dynamic read slightly different from how he expected.

Not that Rodya had a crush on him. That was impossible. Of course he knew that Raz was incredible and wackily adorable and caring and hilarious but, Rodya assured himself, in a completely platonic way. 

And yet, whispered the back of his mind, you still dreamed about kissing him. 

Shut the fuck up, Rodya answered it.

Why are you protesting so much? Touchy, touchy, his thoughts replied, and Rodya suddenly wanted to punch himself in the face. 

And Raz was avoiding him. He was quieter than usual (which isn't really very quiet, in all fairness) and wouldn't meet Rodya's eyes. He'd mentioned that something had happened.

Oh my god, Rodya thought, what if I kissed him. What if I actually kissed him. 

The class ended before he could go any further with that dangerous train of thought and he was left with an internal crisis, a notebook full of doodles, and zero notes for the period.


	4. Chapter 4

Raskolnikov jolted awake a day later, room dark, curtains drawn, with the remnants of a dream clattering in his head. More importantly, he remembered, for the second time in as many days, kissing his roommate. No rest for the weary, he supposed.

It hadn't been a dream. He was sure of it. Okay, this time it had been, but last time had been very mortifyingly real. His dream was not a fabrication of his mind, it was the lasting impression of something real.

Well, shit, thought Rodya. No wonder Raz had been acting so weird. 

How could he have done that? He still didn't have any context for the... Incident. What if he'd done it without any pretense, without any permission? What if Raz was mad at him? What if he'd just ruined his only actual friendship at the college? He felt sick.

Rodya was contemplating the logistics of running away from school and living out the rests of his days in Australia or some equally godforsaken place when his door flew open.

"FUCK," yelled Rodya.  
\--

Razumikhin's immediate thought was to respond with "is that an invitation?" and his second thought was to offer coffee as consolation for god-knows-what-had-happened-this-time.

He went with the second one.

Rodya was staring contemplatively into the depths of his coffee, which was never a good thing, and Razumikhin braced himself. Rodya took a shaky breath.

"Raz" his voice cracked a little bit, a combination of nerves and early-morning roughness. "I, uh. I kissed you. I think."

And Dmitri, halfway through taking a waffle out of the toaster, wasn't sure what to say apart from "yeah." He'd known this was coming. Rodya was too good at reading people not to figure it out, but any of Dmitri's attempts to plan for it always skipped the conversation part and went straight to them making out passionately on their shitty couch. Planning ahead was not his strong suit.

"I'm. I mean, I just... I'm sorry. That was rude of me" Rodya continued.

"No!" Dmitri burst out. "I mean, no, it was nice."

He wasn't sure how to properly articulate that no, Rodya needed to stop thinking so lowly of himself and no, it hadn't been rude at all, that he'd been pining for Rodya since shortly after they'd met and dear god permission wasn't even on his radar, how could he be offended in the least.

But, because he was cursedly horrible at transmitting his thoughts to speech, he continued "I like you, okay? I just didn't know how to tell you. Seems like you took care of that for me."

Rodya looked away, curls falling into his eyes, and Razumikhin kind of wanted to stab himself in the foot.

"So, do you-" he coughed awkwardly, "do you return the sentiment, or-?"

"I don't KNOW!" Rodya burst out, "I don't have these kinds of feelings. I thought I didn't get crushes on people but I might have been wrong and I don't even have a frame of reference for this stuff I just-" he took a deep, shuddering breath. His hands were twisted in his sleep-mussed hair. "It's a little bit scary, okay? But maybe. I think I might."

Razumikhin, for his part, was unsure how to react. What could he do to help? There's only so much you can do to help a previously self-assumed aromantic through a crisis without sounding like a small-minded dick. 

"That's fine," he finally said, "I thought I was straight, you know."

Rodya snorted, his mouth curling up and his full-bodied tension easing away. 

"I'm glad to hear that I helped you with your queer awakening," he replied sarcastically, and Razumikhin knew that he hadn't fucked up nearly as badly as he'd thought. Rodya was laughing the shaky laughter that comes after the high of a massive relief. His dark hair was a mess and he was wearing his stupid, worn out school sweatshirt and Dmitri had never been so infatuated.

"Hey," he said, moving his hand so their fingers were just touching, "Can I kiss you?"

And Rodya, face aflame and eyes diverted, nodded.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And finally, our lord and savior Dunya has arrived.

“Shitty coffee, if you ask me.”

“I like it.”

“You would.”

Razumikhin shrugged benignly and took another sip. Raskolnikov did as well, but not without frowning to uphold his pretentious-coffee-drinker status. They were sitting at opposite ends of a table with several textbooks, a stack of flashcards, and Rodya’s sister, who was up for a visit, between them. 

“I feel awkward intruding on your date, bro,” She said.

Rodya coughed violently into his coffee at the same time Dmitri flushed and exclaimed, “It’s NOT”

Rodya wiped his mouth with his sweatshirt sleeve. “Look, the thing I told you about- It was just one time!” He said. Dmitri shifted uncomfortably. 

“You did kiss him though, right?” Dunya replied smugly.

“I was drugged up on cough medicine!”

“Cough medicine might lower your impulse control, but it doesn’t put new ideas in your head.”

Rodya grasped for a reply, came up empty, and took an angry sip of coffee. 

“Kind of a crappy first date anyway,” Dunya continued, a smirk growing on her face, “What with the study materials, the younger sister…”

“Oh my god” Rodya replied eloquently, faceplanting into a textbook.

Dunya laughed and turned to Dmitri.

“What say you, Dima?”

“Uh.” He looked back and forth between the two siblings. Rodya was shooting him a death glare over the edge of a textbook, and Dunya was grinning maniacally, relishing her victory over her brother.

“Go ahead,” She said, “He’s not gonna do anything.” She flicked Rodya on the head. 

“Well,” said Razumikhin, a smile spreading across his face, “He did kiss me one other time.”

“I’m done here,” interrupted Rodya, bolting up from the table.

“Finish your story,” said Dunya, ignoring her brother’s outburst, “Sounds like I’m missing quite a few details.”

\--

Rodya slunk back to the table to find his friend red-faced and grinning and his sister with her eyes aflame. That was never a good thing- it only happened a) when she was about to destroy someone, physically or verbally or b) when she was plotting. Rodya braced himself.

“Alright,” She said, “Since I’m clearly the romance expert here,”

“Since when,” Muttered Rodya.

“SINCE I’M CLEARLY THE ROMANCE EXPERT HERE,” She repeated, shooting him a glare, “I’m taking your situation into my hands. You’re welcome.”

This, thought Rodya, was not going to end well.


	6. Chapter 6

“Well yeah, like I said, he was super out of it. He didn’t even remember it the next day.”

“God, of course he didn’t,” Dunya leaned back, laughing, “He’s a bit of a trainwreck, isn’t he.”   
She paused, seemingly deep in thought, and her expression turned more serious. When she spoke, her voice no longer held the wild laughter it had before.

“Listen, Dima. I need to know if you’re serious about dating him.”

“Wh- Of course I am,” He replied, remembering his months of pining. 

“I know he can be kind of… Abrasive,” Dmitri snickered at that. “Well it’s the truth! Anyway, I know you care about him. And he doesn’t like to let people get close to him. But he doesn’t take care of himself and I want you to promise you’ll help him out. I mean, I know I have to uphold my position as sarcastic younger sister, but I worry about him.”

Dima thought. Rodya did have an obvious tendency to run himself into the ground, putting off sleeping and eating until he was barely functional, and he flinched away from physical and verbal affection alike. Could Dmitri really put a dent in years of self-destructive behavior?   
Then again, he was one of the few people close to Rodya. Hell, he even had a nickname, a clear victory against Rodya’s impenetrable shell of self-isolation. “Raz” in Rodya’s voice was something to wear like a medal. 

“Yes. I promise.”

\---

“So what did my sister talk to you about?” Rodya asked pointedly. 

“Um. I don’t know, probably what you’d expect her to,” Dmitri replied.

Rodya glared at him, coal-black eyes boring through his flimsy attempt at deflecting the question.

“She told me she’d stab me if I hurt you,” Dmitri offered.

Rodya still looked displeased, so he continued, “She wants me to make sure you take care of yourself. She says she’s worried.” 

So am I, thought Raz, the words hanging unspoken in the air.

The line of Rodya’s mouth tightened, and he looked away. His discomfort was palpable, and Dima, for lack of a better idea, pulled him into a hug. Rodya flinched, but didn’t pull away.

“I swear, you’re gonna be your own undoing,” He said, “and I don’t want to see that happen.” He could feel Rodya’s breath against his cheek, the way it hitched when he pressed a kiss to his temple, and the way Rodya finally hugged him back, fingers clutching at his shirt.


End file.
